SHIFTING INHERITANCE

Shifting Inheritance are three 19 minute videos with sound, music and original poetic texts to be shown on screens, synchronized and looped.

Nora Adwan – video & text
Eva Pfitzenmaier – music & sound design

Exhibitions:

2021:
Box Galleri, Göteborg, Sweden;
O.art.ath, Athens, Greece

2022:
Hordaland Kunstsenter, Bergen, Norway; 
P21 Gallery, London, UK;
Guramayne Art Center, Ethiopia; Kunstparken Risør, Norway

2024: 
Vestlandsutstillingen, touring West Coast Norway

The project was also featured on the e-flux platform for video & film.

In Shifting Inheritance visual artist Nora Adwan is working with the idea of inherited trauma, that the trauma of the parents is continued in the children born in the West. She is working on finding connections between the experiences of the parents and the childhood nightmares of their children.

Nora’s work is influenced by geographical contexts, patterns of migration, displacement, and statelessness and takes an intuitive and emotional stance on these concepts. Living as part of a refugee diaspora (Palestinian) has deeply impacted the content of her work as an artist.

The imagery of Shifting Inheritance is taken from video filmed in Norway and Jordan: the work is a hybrid of forms between documentary and video art which is shown as a three-screen video work: One with footage from Norway, one with footage from Jordan, and one representing the emotional (abstract) space between them with maps and landscapes and text. The work is trying to dissect what creates a sense of belonging and identity.

The sound by Eva Pfitzenmaier is an own entity that ties the separate videos together. It consists of musical elements played on different instruments from both Western and Arabic culture, field recordings, and original sound material from the videos.